The present invention relates in general to article pickup devices, and, more particularly, to devices for the sanitary pickup of animal feces.
Many municipalities have laws and ordinances requiring animal owners to remove the feces left by their animals from public and private property. Furthermore, animal owners often desire to pick up animal droppings from an area wherein the animal is confined. Such removal requires the animal owner to pick up the feces and transport it to a suitable depository.
It is desirable to accomplish the pickup task in a sanitary manner so that the owner is not required to contact either the feces itself or any element of a pickup device which contacts that feces. It is also desirable to permit disposal of the feces in a securely wrapped manner.
There are many devices which permit one to pick up such feces and transfer that picked-up feces into a wrapper. However, all of these known devices have a similar deficiency, in that the wrapper used to contain the feces must be closed by hand, thereby requiring the user to come into contact with the wrapper. Any time one contacts an element which itself contacts the feces, the sanitary nature of the device is contravened.
There are also devices known which permit orientation of a bag below an animal to receive droppings therein. See, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,010,970 issued to J. R. Campbell. However, the device disclosed in the Campbell patent requires a special bag which is closed by hand. Both of these requirements are undesirable, and the latter requirement is unsanitary.
None of the presently known devices are both completely sanitary and amenable to use in a variety of manners, that is, for both pickup and/or catching debris. Catching debris may be important in certain situations, such as in a training environment or the like; however, if for some reason catching is missed, it is inconvenient to change devices to execute a pickup. Such change of devices may cause loss of time and be expensive. Accordingly, there is need of a single sanitary pickup device which can be operated in at least two modes, one mode being a pickup mode and the other being a catching mode wherein the device is operated in a manner which catches debris before that debris reaches the ground. There are devices which can operate both as a pickup and a catching device, but these devices, such as the device disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,937,509, are not completely sanitary as part of either the wrapper or the device itself near the feces contacting areas thereof must be contacted by a user for disposing the filled wrapper. Such contact is not sanitary and is quite undesirable.
Further devices used to pick up animal feces are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,703,158 (which requires a user to contact the wrapper after use and is, therefore, quite unsanitary, and cannot be used in dual modes); 3,868,135 (having a hinge which may be contacted by feces and hence is undesirable); 3,984,139 and 3,606,436 (which do not permit removal of a wrapper in a completely sanitary manner).
The device embodying the teachings of the present invention enables one to pick up, wrap and transport articles such as animal droppings without contacting either the droppings or any element of the device which itself contacts the droppings, and further permits catching such droppings before such debris reaches the ground.